Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration (Thornbush Press, 2024) and Forty Facets of the Ascension (Thornbush Press, 2025).
In a pair of new books, Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration (August 2024), and Forty Facets of the Ascension (November 2025), Sarah Hinlicky Wilson has written small, tidy volumes that contain lively discussions of two neglected dates in the church calendar. As a pastor, Wilson found that these dates occurred annually, showing up and demanding sermons for which she lacked any good ideas. As a writer is wont to do, she set out to write a book to fill each gap.
Wilson is a preacher’s writer. Her books are eminently readable and clearly reflect her own hermeneutic. In her words, from the Transfiguration book, “A sophisticated myth would make grander claims with longer-lasting effects. It would explain things.” A good Lutheran, she knows that this is not the sort of myth contained in Scripture. The story is much weirder than that.
She reminds us, in clear and compelling fashion, that these stories are about God. Instead of relying on too many commentaries and speculative knowledge, burying the lively word in footnotes, Wilson dives right in and attempts to draw us a picture of how these events connect to the broader pattern of Scripture, which itself endeavors to tell the truth about God.
In her reading of the Transfiguration, on which I focus here, she sets the stage as if it were a whodunnit. Peter, James and John have just walked up a mountain. They are tired. Luke tells us that the men are “very sleepy” (Lk 9:33), and are awakened from their slumber by nothing less than the transfigured Christ. But what are they really looking at, and what does it mean?
The Transfiguration, perhaps the “overlooked” bookend of God’s divine appearances through Christ’s ministry, is underwhelming compared to Christ’s baptism and the Ascension. On both occasions Jesus is clearly either coming or going. In the first there is a booming voice from the clouds that accompanies Christ’s baptism, and God’s presence is clearly in the clouds that receive him when he returns to the Father after his resurrection.
But in the Transfiguration, Jesus doesn’t go anywhere. He stays put. This episode is remarkably lacking in events or action. Jesus “was transfigured,” but returns. The stasis of the experience is emphasized by some early Greek interpreters who say that in truth nothing really happened when Jesus was transfigured—the disciples were simply able to perceive Jesus’ divine identity for the first time. What these interpreters are emphasizing is that Jesus has always been divine, and that God’s presence with him is not occasional, as if he put on an overcoat as needed. He was God the whole time.
But if this is the case—if nothing “changes” with Jesus at the Transfiguration, and if nothing happens—then what is the meaning of this event, noted in all of the synoptic gospels and remembered in the church’s liturgical year?
Wilson would have us see the Transfiguration as Christ’s “tabernacling among us” (John 1:14) as God. But as with every aspect of Christ’s earthly ministry, it is only temporary. He hasn’t yet come to stay.
Though the referent of “tabernacle” refers to Old Testament worship, its reference in the Transfiguration account is to the three “shelters”, or “tents” that Peter requested be made–one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. This is one clue that the Transfiguration is linked to the feast of Booths. The Feast of Booths, or Sukkot, is one of three pilgrimage festivals that Israel observed at Jesus’ time. These feasts were pilgrimage festivals—occasions where pilgrims would go up to Jerusalem to observe the religious holiday. Wilson notes that Passover and Pentecost both explain the presence of pilgrims in Jerusalem at the time of those events.
But in Jesus’ time, by her recounting, the feast of Tabernacles was perhaps the foremost Jewish feast. Seven days of offerings would precede a solemn assembly on the eighth day. Luke places the transfiguration on the “eighth day”—the day of the solemn assembly that the feast of Tabernacles would observe. As she reads it, then, the solemn assembly enshrined in Israel’s history, commemorated on this day, is offered to Christ himself. As with the baptism and the Ascension, the Transfiguration identifies Christ as God. The clouds from which God’s voice descend in the baptism are the same clouds that will receive him in the Ascension. In the Transfiguration, the disciples enter the cloud. The tabernacling is intended to point us to God in this time between the times.
“In Jesus’ Baptism and Transfiguration”, she writes, “there is a common pattern: the miraculous action is performed upon him rather than by him. He is object, not subject. He is the only-begotten Son who receives from his almighty Father. He is passive in order to be active, spoken-over in order to speak, and the order of the in-order-to makes all the difference. But in Jesus’ Resurrection, there is a change in the pattern. One might even say, a metamorphosis.”
In the Resurrection, what we see is Jesus acting with all of the power of God, defeating death as only God could do. In the Transfiguration, we have a feast of the time-between-the-times. Christ, the Transfigured one, invites his disciples into the cloud not only that they might see him, but that they themselves might be changed. It is a brief temporary taste of what will one day be total; “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Cor 15:52). In Christ’s baptism Jesus began what came to completion in the Ascension, when he returns to the Father; but in the Transfiguration, he stayed, briefly, with us.
We live in the land of tents. In the between times, between beginnings and endings, drowsy and transient and unsure of which mountain we are on. I like to think that Paul was referring to this event when he writes, “Wake, sleeper!”—You drowsy ones!—Just like the last time I had to arouse you with a cloud flanked by prophets. When we see him in the life to come, we will not all sleep, and yet we will be changed. We will be wide awake. But for now, our drowsiness sometimes still precedes our transformation. That is the kind of thing God does.
Wilson has published these volumes from her own press, Thornbush Press, which she launched in 2020. To date she has published ten books, including a novel, a memoir, a volume of short stories, and an edition of Luther’s catechism. The works she has selected to publish are delightfully quirky while still remaining serious and learned.
I first stumbled upon her work through her podcast, Queen of the Sciences, which is by my judgment the best theology podcast available. Co-hosted with her dad, theologian Paul Hinlicky, the episodes take up serious topics without taking themselves too seriously—a true accomplishment, if you know the genre. The rapport between father and daughter makes the whole thing light and sweet while remaining deeply learned. It’s a real gem.
I review a lot of books about gender and feminism. Some of this is an occupational hazard; I know something about this literature because of my training. Some of this is a matter of personal biography; I am female, so I’m thought to have a stake in the issue.
But some of this has become a matter of my own vocation. I care about the quality of modern theology and modern preaching. But too much of the focus on a question like “women’s preaching” or “women’s ordination” has made the possessive noun the subject of our concern. At the same time, we’ve come to care too little about the noun itself—too little about “preaching” and “ordination” and about theological thinking on the whole.
Much of what passes for discussion of “women’s preaching” or “women’s theology” leaves the latter noun uninterrogated. But we gain nothing if women participate in preaching and theology if the work they do is shoddy. In fact, we might in the end lose something if the participation of women in theological writing yields poor argument, and women come to bear the blame. Sarah Hinlicky Wilson can be accused of neither poor argument or shoddy writing. She is doing what smart women have always done—acting as a trailblazer. The whole point of theology, after all, is to speak truthfully about God. In her weird and wonderful way, she has done just that. May her tribe increase.
